🤖 Waymo Giving 100,000 Robotaxi Rides Per Week But Not Making Any Money

• Waymo, a Google-owned robotaxi service, is currently providing over 100,000 paid rides weekly in major cities but is not yet profitable, reporting a significant operating loss in 2023.
• Unlike rideshare competitors like Uber and Lyft, Waymo incurs high costs by needing to purchase and maintain its own fleet of autonomous vehicles, which are costly (up to $100,000 each).
• To expand its operations, Waymo must invest heavily in research and development, including creating detailed maps for new cities, while also navigating public hesitancy towards self-driving technology.

🎧 Apple will start selling AirPods with built-in hearing aids

• Apple is introducing a version of its AirPods Pro with built-in hearing aid features, aimed at aiding over 1 billion people with mild to moderate hearing loss.
• Users can take a quick hearing test using their iPhone or iPad, allowing the AirPods to make personalized adjustments to enhance sound and improve conversation engagement.
• In addition, Apple is launching new Apple Watch features to detect sleep apnea, using a new “Breathing Disturbances” metric to notify users of potential issues.

🚀 SpaceX launches Polaris Dawn, where astronauts will venture farther than any humans in more than 50 years

• The Polaris Dawn mission, launched by SpaceX, aims for the first commercial spacewalk and will reach an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, the highest humans have traveled since 1972.
• The mission crew includes billionaire Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Poteet, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, with an objective to study radiation effects on the human body.
• During the five-day mission, Isaacman and Gillis will conduct the first non-governmental spacewalk, using new SpaceX-designed suits, while testing advanced communication technologies for future Mars missions.

🔒 As quantum computing threats loom, Microsoft updates its core crypto library

• Microsoft has updated its core cryptographic library, SymCrypt, adding two new post-quantum encryption algorithms, ML-KEM and XMSS, to combat the potential threats posed by quantum computing.
• The updates are part of a larger overhaul to incorporate encryption protocols that are resistant to quantum attacks, with additional algorithms, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA, planned for release in the coming months.
• Quantum computing poses a significant risk to traditional cryptographic algorithms like RSA and Diffie-Hellman, but the new post-quantum algorithms are based on mathematical problems resilient to cracking by Shor's algorithm, requiring trillions of guesses to break.

🤖 OpenAI to Release Thinking ‘Strawberry' AI Model Within 2 Weeks

• OpenAI is set to launch its new AI model, Strawberry, within the next two weeks, which will enhance advanced reasoning capabilities and solve unfamiliar math problems.
• The company reported over 1 million paying business users for its products, a significant increase from 600,000 in April, reflecting the growing adoption of its AI solutions.
• OpenAI is seeking to raise several billion dollars in a funding round that would value the company over $100 billion, as it continues to invest heavily in AI development.

🎤 Taylor Swift cites AI deepfakes in endorsement for Kamala Harris

• Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for US President on Instagram, motivated by concerns over AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation.
• Swift revealed that an AI of her falsely endorsing Donald Trump contributed to her fears about the dangers of spreading misinformation.
• The discussion around Swift and AI is ongoing, especially after previous incidents involving explicit AI-generated images of her circulating on social media platforms.

📱 Apple announces its new A18 and A18 Pro iPhone chips

• Apple unveiled its new A18 chip and A18 Pro chip at the "Glowtime" event, which will be implemented in the standard iPhone and Pro models, respectively.
• The A18 features a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU, promising improvements of 30% in CPU performance and 40% in GPU performance over the previous A16 Bionic chip, with a 2x improvement in the Neural Engine's 16-core processing.
• The A18 Pro additionally claims to be 15% faster than the A17 Pro, has 17% more memory bandwidth, and has enhanced image-processing capabilities, such as a 2x improvement in video encoding.